YORKTON—Saskatchewan entrepreneur, Murad Al-Katib, was in the city on Oct. 5th to speak at the Yorkton Chamber of Commerce Business Dinner.
"As the President, CEO and board member of AGT food and ingredients, he has received recognition and many awards for his entrepreneurship including being named as [Ernst & Young] World Entrepreneur of the year in 2017, the Globe and Mail's Innovator CEO of the year 2020; and the Canadian Western Agribition's top 50 in Canadian Agriculture in 2021," said Juanita Polegi, Executive Director with the Yorkton Chamber of Commerce.
"My journey actually started when my parents made the decision in 1965 to immigrate to Canada—I'm a first generation Canadian—I was born in the Davidson Hospital in Davidson, Saskatchewan," said Al-Katib in his address to attendees of the dinner.
Al-Katib, the son of Turkish immigrants, reflected on his youth, noting the pride in his rural Saskatchewan roots.
His father was a country doctor who trained in the United Kingdom and served 55 years as a full-time rural physician. In 1976 his mother was the first woman immigrant Muslim elected to an RM council in Canada.
Al-Katib said his mother came to Saskatchewan in 1967 as a young bride who didn't speak a word of English, but learned the language through watching the children's program Sesame Street with Al-Katib and his siblings. She would go on to serve on the town council of Davidson for 27 years.
“That was kind of the fabric of my upbringing,” said Al-Katib.
Al-Katib said that in 1982, as a 10-year-old growing up in rural Saskatchewan, the talk of rural communities was focused on the closure of wooden elevators.
"Everywhere was closing and there was a race to the terminals – whoever landed the concrete terminals would survive," said Al-Katib, adding, "the hospitals would survive, the schools would survive, the community would flourish,” noting the idea was that those without concrete terminals would not survive.
Al-Katib said that as a 10-year-old those conversations about the terminals impressed upon him the importance of agriculture.
"Everything that was a part of our community...agriculture was at the foundation of that," said Al-Katib.
Al-Katib would go on to achieve a Bachelor of Commerce Degree in Finance through the University of Saskatchewan and later a Master's Degree at Arizona State University.
Al-Katib said his very first job was at the “geopolitical center of the world in Washington D.C. at the Canadian Embassy.
"I decided that my training was going to be in International business," said Al-Katib, adding, "the world was growing and there was going to be this massive transformation in the world...geopolitics and governments were very important when it comes to agriculture and food security."
From Washington, Al-Katib continued to pay attention to the goings-on in his home province and would find himself writing a letter to then Premiere, Roy Romanow.
"I wrote a letter to Premiere Roy Romanow...and I said, 'look, Saskatchewan has what the world wants and if I was in charge of International Trade in Saskatchewan this is what I would do',” said Al-Katib.
“I was 23-years-old and one day my phone rang and it was the Deputy Premiere of Saskatchewan who said, 'I read your proposal, I'm intrigued, come see me',” said Al-Katib, adding, “at the age of 23 I moved back to Saskatchewan and I got a leadership role with the Saskatchewan government to head up the Emerging Markets Trade Group.”
“I travelled to 68 countries around the world when I was with the Saskatchewan government over six years,” said Al-Katib, adding, “I was a young man—still 28 years old—there were all kinds of forces pulling me to Toronto, to London, to New York but my passion was right here in the province.”
Al-Katib said he experienced a big fish – little fish dilemma.
“I wanted to be in the big pond of the world, I wanted to be a big fish one day, but there were opportunities right here in Saskatchewan to do something that I couldn't do maybe in Toronto or London or New York.”
Al-Katib said that at 28-years-old, with his wife six months pregnant with twins, he quit his six-figure job as an Assistant Deputy Minister and started a lentil company.
Al-Katib said after coming up with a proposal, he walked into a Farm Credit Canada office and the FCC lent him 1.4 million dollars.
In 2021, AGT Foods did just shy of $ 2.2B in sales, according to Al-Katib.
His first vision, the processing plant in Regina, has grown to 46 manufacturing processing facilities located in five continents around the world.
“When we started processing red lentils in Regina there were only 40,000 tonnes growing in the whole country and we built a 100,000 tonne processing capacity,” said Al-Katib, adding, “we had to give the farmers the feeling that they could have a market out of it—that they could not only grow it, but make money growing it—we had to create local demand.”
“No region of Saskatchewan knows that better than Yorkton with the success that we've seen storied in the world in the canola industry,” said Al-Katib, adding, “value added agriculture is certainly a game changer for all of us.”
Al-Katib said that, “in the next 40 years we'll have to grow the same amount of food as the world grew in the last 10,000 years—that's not anecdotal, that's quantified.”
“That scares the heck out of me,” said Al-Katib, adding, “when a baby is hungry, they cry, when a 19-year-old-man is hungry and unemployed they protest.”
“We're seeing in the world today we're on the verge of food insecurity for maybe the first time again in years,” said Al-Katib.
“Entrepreneurs and farmers together will solve that problem and we'll be able to react to the opportunity to feed ten million people by 2050,” said Al-Katib, adding, “we have to find a way to get ourselves out of the commodity ghetto and into the value-added sector more and more in the province.”
“It's a generational opportunity that we've never seen.”
